Mark Gimenez - The Abduction

Gary Jennings would surely be convicted. Then what? Death row, waiting a decade to die by lethal injection? Or life without parole, waiting for the next inmate to enter his cell and rape him, eventually contracting AIDS and dying a long, slow, painful death? Debbie would divorce him and his daughter would never know him or want to. His parents were dead, he had no siblings, he soon would have no one. He was destined to die a lonely fuckup.

Darkness enveloped his mind as hot tears ran down his face. He felt so alone, so empty, so without faith, hope, or a future. His life was over. That he was still breathing was just a technicality. He looked up. There was only one thing to do.

Gary Jennings unzipped his white jail pants.

Lying awake last night, Chief of Police Paul Ryan had begun having doubts about the prime suspect. Had Gary Jennings really abducted and murdered Gracie Ann Brice? All the evidence said yes: the jersey, the porn, the phone calls, the prior offense, the coach’s ID, and now her blood, but still… it just didn’t seem to fit. It was too pat. All the evidence pointed at Jennings when it shouldn’t. An educated employee at a computer company stalking the boss’s daughter? Calling from his own cell phone at work, no attempt to cover his tracks? Leaving her jersey in his truck? Child porn under the floor mat? Was Jennings really that stupid? And if that dumb-ass Eddie had found Jennings’s truck unlocked, who else might have?

A thorough search of his truck by the FBI’s finest turned up nothing but a thin blood smear, not another piece of evidence that put Gracie in his truck, not her hair or fingerprints or fibers from her clothes or grass from the soccer field or leaves from the woods. And the coach’s ID wasn’t all that positive, even though Jennings fit the suspect’s general description.

Of course, Jennings’s photo and residence address were on the state’s sex offender website; anyone who wanted to find a blond, blue-eyed convicted sex offender living in the county could easily do so. But one who worked for the victim’s father? What were the odds of that? And why would anyone want to? To frame a sex offender? It made no sense. He weighed in his mind the upside and downside of looking deeper and quickly decided there was no upside, at least not for Paul Ryan.

Fifty-two years old, there were no other police jobs out there for him. This was the end of the line. Seventy-five thousand a year plus benefits. Eight more years, he would earn his pension. Enough to retire to a little house in Sun City, him and the wife. A good life, or at least good enough. Was he willing to throw it all away for Jennings? For that little frat-boy fuckup? Hell, maybe his big-time lawyer can prove the boy is innocent. Not likely in an emotionally charged high-profile child abduction case-death by lethal injection, that was this boy’s future. But that wasn’t Ryan’s fault; that was the law! Why should Paul Ryan risk his financial security for this boy? On the off chance that Jennings might not be the abductor? Even a step in that direction would cost Ryan his job-the mayor would not be pleased-and where would that leave him? Unemployed and unemployable. No health care. No pension. Working at the Wal-Mart. He could not think of one good reason to look deeper.

Except that it was the right thing to do.

And there was the baby. The baby named Sarah was lying in the neonatal unit in critical condition, born almost two months’ premature. Was the baby on Paul Ryan’s tab? Damnit, he didn’t put the victim’s blood and jersey in Jennings’s truck! He didn’t make nine phone calls to the victim! He didn’t haul Jennings’s pregnant wife into the station!

But he did show her the porn.

Because he needed a confession to keep his job, a baby might die. So Paul Ryan felt guilty-a guilt that kept him awake through the night and pacing the house until a sense of shame had overwhelmed him: Baby Sarah.

By 4:00 A.M., whether born of a need for personal redemption or simply sleep deprivation, Paul Ryan had made a life-altering decision: he would do the right thing.

By 6:00 A.M., Jennings had done it for him.

Ryan was standing outside Gary Jennings’s cell, looking in at his lifeless form hanging there, one leg of his white jail pants tied around his neck, the other tied around the pipes of the new sprinkler system the town had installed last month to meet code.

Innocent suspects don’t commit suicide.

It was Wednesday morning and Coach Wally was whistling as he walked up to the entrance to the Post Oak Town Hall. Unlike most visitors who would arrive today to pay traffic tickets, Wally Fagan was a happy man. Happy and a bit proud of himself-heck, he felt so downright patriotic he wanted to salute his reflection in the glass doors.

He was here to free an innocent man.

At the entrance, Wally paused and checked himself over and adjusted the clip-on tie he had added to his short-sleeve shirt just in case cameras were present. Shoot, he might even make the national news, maybe even get interviewed by Katie Couric. They might even call him a hero.

He pulled open the door and entered the building. Just inside the door was a security checkpoint with metal detectors, like at the airport, manned by a uniformed cop. Wally began emptying his pockets into a small plastic container but looked up when another cop hurried over; he was grinning like he had just won a lifetime supply of donuts.

“Sonofabitch offed himself!”

The other cop’s mouth fell open. “No shit?”

“Yep.” The grinning cop grabbed his neck, stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth, and made a gagging sound. “Hung himself in his cell last night. Course, he might’ve been playing some kind of perverted sex game with himself.”

The two cops laughed merrily, but a sick feeling crept over Wally. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know.

“Who?”

The grinning cop turned his way and said, “Jennings. Guy that abducted Gracie.”

“He’s… dead? ”

“As a doornail. Did the world a favor. No trial, no appeals, no execution. Case is closed.”

At that moment, the double doors behind Wally flew open and excited reporters and cameramen rushed inside and pushed past Wally.

“Is it true?” they shouted. “Jennings committed suicide?”

“Yep,” the first cop said, waving them through the checkpoint without checking. “Give himself the death penalty.”

In a split-second, Wally Fagan’s mind played out two alternate paths in life for him to choose from, as clearly as if he were watching a movie of his life, a choice he knew would determine the future course of his life. The first path was to continue inside, straight to the chief’s office, which would be crowded with the media, stand in front of the microphones and bright lights and cameras and tell the world what he knew, what he had remembered last night at work: the blond man in the black cap and plaid shirt who had asked about Gracie after the game was missing his right index finger. Gary Jennings was not. He had all of his fingers. Jennings was not the abductor. He was innocent. But now he was dead. And it was Wally’s fault. That’s what they would say-the chief, the press, the FBI, Jennings’s pregnant wife, the world. Wally Fagan would make the national news all right, but they wouldn’t call him a hero. They would blame him for the death of an innocent man.

Someone is always blamed.

Wally chose the second path. He retrieved his personal items from the small plastic container, stuffed them into his pockets, and exited the building, vowing to take his secret to the grave.

At seven in the morning Texas time, being eight on the floor of the NASDAQ exchange in New York City, only ninety minutes prior to the opening trade in the BriceWare. com IPO-that is, on the day all of his dreams were supposed to come true-the company founder, president and CEO, chairman of the board, and creative genius, John R. Brice, who boasted a Ph. D. in algorithms from MIT and a 190 IQ, lay crashed on the couch in his home office. He was curled up under a Boston Red Sox souvenir blanket. His boyish face was buried in the thick folds of soft leather where the couch back met the seat. He was wondering why his wife did not love him.